Bus-powered external disks

I'm on the look out for a portable disk primarily for use with Time Machine. Apple seems to be selling SmartDisk^WVerbatim FireLite drives for a surprisingly reasonable sum (£89.95 for 160GB), but I've not been able to find out what sort of mechanisms they use (ATA or SATA) or what sort of performance they give.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must. I was put off by the LaCie "Porsche" drives apparently having plastic cases...

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

I've got a FireLite FW 120GB drive and a FireLite USB 80GB drive. Both are reasonably fast and just work. The FW one is in work at present as a Time Machine drive for a test MacOS X 10.5 wiki server (so I can't do tests on it).

I've never had issues with the read or write speeds though on either of the drives.

I'm on the look out for a portable disk primarily for use with Time Machine. Apple seems to be selling SmartDisk^WVerbatim FireLite drives for a surprisingly reasonable sum (£89.95 for 160GB), but I've not been able to find out what sort of mechanisms they use (ATA or SATA) or what sort of performance they give.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must. I was put off by the LaCie "Porsche" drives apparently having plastic cases...

Have they? the one I have at work seems pretty metal. Although it isn't bus powered

I would be interested though for when I upgrade my mums machine to 10.5. I am using a USB thing from PCWorld, but she needs a firewire one. --
Woody

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must.

I use "Warp" enclosures from Maplin for 2.5in disks, they have USB2 and Firewire 400 interfaces. They work reliably bus powered via Firewire and are a bit hit and miss when used as USB2 buspowered enclosures. If you must use them with USB2 it's best to plug the cable into the computer first, using two USB sockets. The cable supplied has twin plugs for this purpose. Then plug the cable into the drive. If you try to plug the cable into the drive first the current draw as the drive spins up causes problems.

I'm on the look out for a portable disk primarily for use with Time Machine. Apple seems to be selling SmartDisk^WVerbatim FireLite drives for a surprisingly reasonable sum (£89.95 for 160GB), but I've not been able to find out what sort of mechanisms they use (ATA or SATA) or what sort of performance they give.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must. I was put off by the LaCie "Porsche" drives apparently having plastic cases...

Cheers,

Chris

At my last employer I carried an 80 GB Firelite FW drive around with me for 2 years, it had lots of use, no problems. I recently bought a few empty Firelite cases off eBay for myself, used but as new, and today some more for work. I've found them very reliable and durable, and all I've seen used ATA hard disks. Useful when you've got spare drives left over from upgrades. The empty cases were £5.35 each, plus a few quid postage and VAT. New complete with drives they appear very good value for money.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

I've got a FireLite FW 120GB drive and a FireLite USB 80GB drive. Both are reasonably fast and just work. The FW one is in work at present as a Time Machine drive for a test MacOS X 10.5 wiki server (so I can't do tests on it).

Ta. I was reasonably impressed with the case Sa and Rog lent me, except it could see 120-ish MB of the disk. I'd assume the 160GB models don't have that limitation ;-)

I've never had issues with the read or write speeds though on either of the drives.

At my last employer I carried an 80 GB Firelite FW drive around with me for 2 years, it had lots of use, no problems. I recently bought a few empty Firelite cases off eBay for myself, used but as new, and today some more for work. I've found them very reliable and durable, and all I've seen used ATA hard disks. Useful when you've got spare drives left over from upgrades. The empty cases were £5.35 each, plus a few quid postage and VAT. New complete with drives they appear very good value for money.

That's an interesting option. The ebay seller doesn't give any details on the bridge board (ie can disks > 120MB work) and also a quick calculation oddly doesn't make it very much cheaper (ie £3) than the ones the Apple store was selling.

I'm on the look out for a portable disk primarily for use with Time Machine. Apple seems to be selling SmartDisk^WVerbatim FireLite drives for a surprisingly reasonable sum (£89.95 for 160GB), but I've not been able to find out what sort of mechanisms they use (ATA or SATA) or what sort of performance they give.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must. I was put off by the LaCie "Porsche" drives apparently having plastic cases...

Have they? the one I have at work seems pretty metal. Although it isn't bus powered

The desktop Porsches have a brushed-metal front and a faux-metal plastic body. They can also be quite noisy, but when idle (low-frequency drone) and when accessing (loud clicking). Not always (and apparently not all of them) but sometimes. Insanely cheap though.

The desktop Porsches have a brushed-metal front and a faux-metal plastic body. They can also be quite noisy, but when idle (low-frequency drone) and when accessing (loud clicking). Not always (and apparently not all of them) but sometimes. Insanely cheap though.

£66 for 500GB from Amazon at the moment. Like you say, insanely cheap.

The desktop Porsches have a brushed-metal front and a faux-metal plastic body. They can also be quite noisy, but when idle (low-frequency drone) and when accessing (loud clicking). Not always (and apparently not all of them) but sometimes. Insanely cheap though.

£66 for 500GB from Amazon at the moment. Like you say, insanely cheap.

Yes, but with only a USB interface. LaCie do charge you a hefty premium for adding a FW interface to a drive.

I use "Warp" enclosures from Maplin for 2.5in disks, they have USB2 and Firewire 400 interfaces. They work reliably bus powered via Firewire and

I hadn't thought of Maplins - good suggestion.

Unfortunately the above's only for 2.5" IDE drives - still not been able to find a FW enclosure for 2.5" SATA drives except ones with installed drives.

If you know of any with a SATA disk installed, that would be very useful info!

Cheers - Jaimie

Actually, the Singularity seems rather useful in the entire work avoidance field. "I _could_ write up that report now but if I put it off, I may well become a weakly godlike entity, at which point not only will I be able to type faster but my comments will be more on-target." - James Nicoll

I'm on the look out for a portable disk primarily for use with Time Machine. Apple seems to be selling SmartDisk^WVerbatim FireLite drives for a surprisingly reasonable sum (£89.95 for 160GB), but I've not been able to find out what sort of mechanisms they use (ATA or SATA) or what sort of performance they give.

Does anyone here have a recent FireLite drive that they'd share their experiences of?

Or does anyone have recommendations for other enclosures? Bus-powered Firewire support is a must. I was put off by the LaCie "Porsche" drives apparently having plastic cases...

Have they? the one I have at work seems pretty metal. Although it isn't bus powered

The desktop Porsches have a brushed-metal front and a faux-metal plastic body. They can also be quite noisy, but when idle (low-frequency drone) and when accessing (loud clicking). Not always (and apparently not all of them) but sometimes. Insanely cheap though.

I don't know about the portable ones.

Portable ones are the same. I've got an 80gb USB/FW version at the office. Came in a nice soft case, works fine, it's survived the drop test on at least one occasion.